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GASB Emergency Toolbox

Operating under today’s difficult circumstances may raise accounting and financial reporting issues that are not commonly dealt with by governments and their auditors. Other issues that may be encountered more often, such as subsequent events, could become more common or of greater magnitude than usual.

The purpose of this “toolbox” is to help stakeholders quickly identify the GASB’s authoritative guidance that could be relevant to the current circumstances. Toolbox links have been provided to identify additional professional organizations from which stakeholders may obtain nonauthoritative recommendations for financial reporting and other activities as government’s deal with the effects of the pandemic.

GASB Guidance

The following are topics in the generally accepted accounting principles for state and local governments that may be of particular relevance to governments at this time. The references are to the GASB’s Codification of Governmental Accounting and Financial Reporting Standards, as of December 31, 2019, which can be accessed free of charge through the Governmental Accounting Research System™ (GARS) at https://gars.gasb.org/.

Certain actions that provide budgetary relief—such as delaying payments on expenses (expenditures) already incurred or accelerating the receipt of future-period revenues—do not result in a comparable change to accrual-based and modified-accrual based inflows and outflows

Revenue recognition:

1600—Basis of Accounting, paragraphs .103–.106 and .113–.115

N50—Nonexchange Transactions, paragraphs .113–.127

P70—Property Taxes, paragraphs .105–.107

S20—Sales and Pledges of Receivables and Future Revenues and Intra-Entity Transfers of Assets and Future Revenues, paragraphs .102–.119

Expenditure recognition:

1600—Basis of Accounting, paragraphs .103 and .116–.125

N50—Nonexchange Transactions, paragraphs .116–.125

Budgetary reporting:

2400—Budgetary Reporting, paragraphs .102, .103, .110, and .111

Revenue and receivable recognition

Estimations of uncollectible amounts

1600—Basis of Accounting, paragraphs .104 and .106

L30—Lending Activities, paragraph .121

N50—Nonexchange Transactions, paragraphs .113, .115, .118, and .123

P70—Property Taxes, paragraph .106

Sales and pledges of receivables and future revenues

Transactions in which a government sells receivables or pledges a future revenue stream to repay a borrowing

S20—Sales and Pledges of Receivables and Future Revenues and Intra-Entity Transfers of Assets and Future Revenues, paragraphs .102–.119

Professional Organizations

The following are professional organizations from the governmental sphere who are offering advice on how to proceed with financial management activities, including accounting and financial reporting, during the pandemic.

NOTE: The GASB establishes guidance only after extensive due process. Therefore, the provision of these links should not be viewed as an endorsement of any kind.